1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to telephone equipment and, in particular, to an apparatus for monitoring outgoing phone calls toward intercepting and redirecting certain telephone calls.
2. Background Art
Home alarm systems are common-place. These systems are generally programmed upon installation to dial-out information via a standard telephone company network information to a central monitoring company selected by the alarm installer. Reprogramming of these alarm systems (and more particularly the telephone number of the monitoring company) is often difficult or cumbersome. Nevertheless, a home owner may be desirous of changing monitoring companies without the expense and/or aggravation of reprogramming the alarm system. Consequently, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device that can intercept telephone calls from home alarms and redirect those calls to different monitoring companies.
The number of long distance telephone companies has increased. While some long distance companies can be directly associated with a consumer's telephone, some of these companies are accessed by dialing a prefix in the form of "10-10-xxxx" before dialing the telephone number of the desired called party. Consequently, it is another (and potentially alternate) object of the present invention to provide a device that can automatically dial this prefix in response to the consumer dialing a standard long distance call (i.e. "1" and then the telephone number).
Additionally, there are various events that consumers manually monitor and, then upon occurrence of the event (e.g. low propane pressure) manually call a third party (e.g. the gas company to schedule a propane delivery). Often times the user fails to note the occurrence of the event or cannot timely place the responsive telephone call to the third party. Accordingly, it is a further (potentially alternate) object of the present invention to provide a device that can automatically dial the appropriate third party automatically upon notification of the occurrence of the event.
These and other objects will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the present drawings, specification and claims before them.